The Desire of the Psychoanalyst, by Anne Béraud

The psychoanalyst is a function that operates from what Lacan calls the desire of the psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst, said Lacan, lends his person “as a prop for the singular phenomena analysis discovered in the transference”. For Lacan, it is in the desire of the psychoanalyst where the operator of the cure would reside.1

“The training of the psychoanalyst requires that he should know, in the process through which he guides his patient, what it is around which the movement turns. He must know, to him must be transmitted, through actual experience, what it is all about. This pivotal point is what I designate – in a way, which, I think, will seem to you sufficiently justified, but which, I hope, as we progress, will appear more and more clear to you, more and more necessary – it is what I designate under the term the desire of the psycho-analyst.”2

Lacan, The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Power, Ecrits, Norton, New York/London, 2006, p. 585.